Sunday, December 4, 2016

If you've read the news this week, it seems that the Fitbit company will buy Pebble. From a business point of view, it does make sense. For the Pebble community, it may be the end...

Currently, the smartwatch market is saturated with all kinds of products from all major brands like Garmin, Apple, Fitbit, Pebble, just to name a few.

Apple is targeting the high-end use with its Apple Watch. Not a bad product, but the price may actually drive away a lot of people. Other manufacturers are more into health monitoring like Fitbit and Garmin. Even Pebble has moved into this health market with the Pebble 2 and the latest firmware available for almost all Pebble smartwatch.

If you are running, swimming or climbing the mount Everest, there is a lot of choices available for a smartwatch. Let's be honest, I'm not part of that market, like 80% of the population. I have nothing against training but having a device dedicated at providing me my health stats is not my cup of tea.

That's where the Pebble smartwatch was shining. A cool smartwatch, with apps and a few extra features. I don't care about my heart rate, I want to reply back to my tweet with my watch.

The Apple watch and the Google Gears do implements those "Dick Tracy" features but at a higher price. For around 150$, Pebble can do it (and the battery lasts for a week...).

My main concern is what will happen with my Pebble Time... If Fitbit shuts down the whole Pebble ecosystem, my Pebble Time watch won't work anymore... No more updates, no new apps, no new watchface...

Currently, there are not alternative to the Pebble, for the same features, for the same price.

Let's hope that we have a few more years ahead of us before we are forced to use a "HealthWatch" instead of a "SmartWatch".